


If You Can Find That Goddamned Yellow Brick Road, Call Me

by Whispering_Sumire



Series: Wait For Me To Come Home [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Laura Hale, Angst, Big Sisters, Brother-Sister Relationships, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Catatonic Peter Hale, Character Study, Derek Hale Needs a Hug, Derek Hale-centric, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Family Feels, Feels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heartfelt Conversations, Hope, Hopeful Ending, Hugging, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Laura Hale Needs A Hug, Laura Hale-centric, Little Brothers, New York, POV Derek Hale, POV Laura Hale, Pack, Pack Dynamics, Pack Family, People Are Flawed, Platonic Cuddling, Poignant, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Pre-Series, Sibling Bonding, Siblings, Suicidal Thoughts, Symbolism, The Hale Family, The Hale Fire, Touch Aversion, Trigger Warning: Kate Argent, a love letter to the camaro, a love letter to the leather jacket
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-18 08:43:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16114883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whispering_Sumire/pseuds/Whispering_Sumire
Summary: "This is the place," she repeats. "I'm going to get a job-" his other brow raises- "get us an apartment, get you back in school," they knit together at that, less an objection than outright confusion, but that's the biggest reaction she's gotten out of him in awhile, so she's counting it as a win. "This is it. This is ourstop."There's a long moment of silence where he says, does,reacts,none. She tongues her molars, incrementally inclining her head, raising her eyebrows questioningly, waiting, and he blinks owlishly at her. Suddenly, clumsily, as if finally realizing she actuallywantshis opinion- and whywouldn'tshe? Why does he expect her tonot?- he nods, stilted and vaguely indifferent.She exhales explosively, and reaches from the steering wheel to pat his knee, forgetting herself for a moment, forgetting that—Her little brother flinches slightly, scent suddenly a swarm of bees,buzzing, terrified, and she winces, quickly replacing her hand on the steering wheel, ignoring the sudden burn behind her eyes, the dull, ever-present ache in her heart."Sorry," he whispers, so, so small that it almost goes unheard.





	If You Can Find That Goddamned Yellow Brick Road, Call Me

**Author's Note:**

> you don't really have to read the first two parts of the series to get this part, but reading them _might_ make this more enjoyable?
> 
> spans from the fire to three years after, and omg i had such a hard time writing this, i really really hope you enjoy it ♥♥♥
> 
> Trigger Warning :: Kate is a psychological mind-fuck, and she not only did the fire thing, but she did lotsa other things to our boy Derek (she is aunty bad-wrong bad-touch, man). She's only ever mentioned, and even then I try to keep it vague, but there are allusions to her not taking no for an answer and generally being a monstrous person, so. _Please_ beware. Also, please, please, please mind the tags, this is directly after the fire, these two are fucked up, okay?

☽ kneeling ☾

* * *

The light in Peter's hospital room is chemical, like the scents of cleaning products soaked into the walls and the tile, squeaking wheels and rattling and the whir-beep of machines, all under fluorescent. Nothing feels real.

Nothing has felt real for the past _day._

She doesn't cry. She doesn't know if she _can_ anymore. She just looks at him.

They said they found him outside of the house, trying to clas his way _in_. And, now, he's covered in bandages, eyes open, glassy, unblinking, lost. The only bond she has left is the shimmering, shredding thing that leads to Derek, everything else is black-hole char, a yawning, _cavernous_ wound, cauterized.

She can hear his heartbeat, _barely_ , under the mechanical thump of his heart-monitor. They told her he was catatonic. She... She wonders if they're wrong. He looks like someone shoved their arm down his throat, grabbed ahold of his soul and just _yanked it_ right out of him. She knows what his bond is supposed to feel like, his wolf-thread, all knotted piano-wire and ivy-strangle wicked intellect, but she doesn't feel _anything_.

Too much nothing.

Empty.

Eviscerated.

The house was surrounded by mountain ash, there was a perfume residue of wolfsbane in the air, after. It serves to think, then, that hunters did this.

She won't be eighteen for a month, yet. They put Derek in some foster home right away, separated them, readily, too quickly. She doesn't have time to do this _legally_ , and she doesn't have time—

She _can't_ think clearly right now. It's impossible. She's not even going to try.

She has to protect him, her only Pack-mate, her family, her _baby **brother**_. She has to get them somewhere... even _marginally_ safer.

Tradition, instinct, tells her she cannot abandon a Pack-mate, but she can't even _feel_ him, she—

It would be better to kill him. That's what she _should_ do, she remembers her lessons, taught to her by her mother, taught to her by Peter _himself_. When a member of your Pack is this injured, when their bond seems a _ghost_ of itself, when you, for whatever reason, cannot take them with you:

Have mercy.

But she can't. She _can't_. She has so little left and she can **not** lose _him_ , too. Not by her own hand. (But what about the Hunters? Will _they_ kill him? Or would they leave him to suffer, as she is about to, not out of cowardice or fear or pain, but out of _maliciousness?_ )

She knows what she came here to do, what her _intent_ was. Because she is the Alpha, now (and she still remembers, so vividly, not even weeks before today, doubting herself, her potential, her _nature_. She remembers part of her wanting to deny it, consumed by all her insecurities), and her duty is to her Pack, all that there is left of it. His soul is already, most likely, gone, and there is no _possible_ way to take him with her. Her mother's voice echoes in her head, along with their Emissaries', along with **his** :

_Have mercy._

She inhales a sharp, shuddering, _painful_ breath.

This is her responsibility, this is—

She slips away from the windowsill, lets her claws slide, easily, over her blunt fingernails, feels the rush of ancient power surge within her, the whispering of her ancestors' in the air, the taste of mountain snowmelt, blood, dust, and graveyard loam on her tongue. Her heart sings- even as she, somewhere abyssal and aching, recoils- with **power**. It is hers, and intoxicating-warm, tingling like champagne just beneath her skin. Another breath, and she forces herself to accept it, not to _ride_ the rush, but live in the moment of it, understanding it as a part of herself, uninhibited, without becoming addicted to the **high** —as she was _taught_ to.

Her mind swirls, skips like a needle on the too-deep groove of a record, repeat-rep-rep-repeat. Beep-bee-bee-beep. Drip-dri-dri- **drop**.

She shivers.

Her hand is positioned over his throat, fingers curled, the foreshadow of her violence spider-like on his the sick pallor of his neck. Her memory flashes through her like a **physical** thing.

 _Reverberating laughter, the sharpest wit she'd ever heard, and she got to make him attend her tea-parties._ Her hand lowers, precariously closer, she focuses on the sinewy sound of his pulse. _"Ah, my dear, we'll all have sparkly, pink-feather boas in **hell**. Might as well get in on the trend **early**."_ Silk-wet, muscles moving, bloodstream, organ pumping, lungs billowing, breathing, soft. _"You're getting older, pup; you think **this** is hard? Just you **wait**."_ The scent of blood and salt flood the air as her claws prick his paper-thin skin, as her first tear falls, followed soon by another, by a devastated sob, and she... she _can't_.

She pulls her hand- destructive, powerful, hateful- away from him, covers her mouth to keep the gasping keen that escapes her as muffled as possible. It takes everything she has left within her to not let her knees buckle as she turns her back to him- she can't look, she can't——her palms just barely concealing all her whimpers, sounds soaking in wretchedness. She shakes, and feels a darkness like no other encroaching.

It _hurts_. It _**hurts**_.

She sniffs, breathes into her hands for a few more moments, eyes scrunched tight against—against _everything_. There's still a wavering, mournful moan in the back of her throat when she lets her hands drop, wipes them clean on her jeans, as composed as she _can_ be, for now, before she sweeps back around, urgent, detached, cutting the strings as quickly as she can.

 _Selfish_ , something within her mocks, _selfish, **selfish** girl_. Desperately, she ignores it.

"I love you," she rasps, leans over his bed-rail to kiss the apple of his unburned cheek, tries not to let her next words bring forth another body-wracking sob, "I'm _sorry."_

And, with that, she leaves him.

She leaves him and she prays to Grandmother Death, to Mother Earth, to Sister Moon, to her Pack, surrendered so **disgustingly** _easily_ to the Wood on the other side of the Veil. She does not know what she's praying for. But she _prays_.

* * *

It didn't take Derek much to run from the temporary home they put him in.

White-static builds up walls around his mind, painted in the oil-sludge of his grief. Everything travels slowly, a blur of gradual vision until he's surrounded by his home.

What _was_ his home.

Everything is a study in _agony_.

The ashes taste like— his mother adorned oils as perfume, and when she hugged him, that olive-slick scent lingered on his tongue for hours after— his father wore black leather, thick, feather-smooth shine, cigarettes and tire-rubber— his older brother would weave flowers into springy onyx curls, and laugh like cloud-cotton, and— his baby siblings, soap and loam and softness caught just right on the wind as they'd play.

Kate used to tie him up and make it painful and tell him that it was because she loved him.

He loved **her**.

 _'You're beautiful,'_ she'd said. _'You're gentle, lovely, kind.'_ He'd remember Paige, black, black, _black_ blood. The way the tendons in her neck moved as she choked on lungs that didn't want to _work_ anymore. Fingers slipped in between his, digits tight against webs, palms against palms, soaked in what was _killing_ her.

He remembers the fluid, swishing sound of her heart beating.

 **Stopping**.

"I'm sorry," he whispers to this skeleton, to this acrid-smoke imprint, to this grave.

He loved her.

She'd smiled, honeysuckles and summer, _sweet_. Gods, but he'd _loved_ her. Her body was supple, pliant, soft, and she offered it to him (on a pyre, this is the pyre, this is his _penance_ ) easily, like sugar, dissolving. Sometimes she'd offered it even when he'd said _no_ , and she told him to thank her after, told him sex was hard for her, told him he was the exception, told him— told him— told him—

"I'm sorry," he whimpers, and his heart snaps like a clumsily held pencil, his legs sway under the near non-existent ghosting wind like lissome flower stems.

He _trusted_ her.

Went to her with yearning beating in his heart, did things so she would compliment him, because he _wanted_ that. Pretty words, ephemeral. Overlapping. Condensed. _Air._ He crawled underneath her skin because he _could_ , because he thought he'd learn to _like_ **being** there.

_Oh, but you didn't think I really **meant** it, sweetie, did you? That's **adorable**. Run along, now, **dog** , run along home. See what good it'll do you **this time**._

When she asked for his clothes, so that they could smell like each other, he gave them. When she did things that hurt him in order to feel good, without asking, without— he thought maybe that was what _adult_ relationships were like. Maybe he was _missing_ something. And when it occurred to him that maybe it was just what _she_ was like? He forgave her. He accepted the ideology of their relationship and accepted that it was okay, because he'd grow with her, and they would live, _love_ together, and maybe when he became the Left Hand and she became the Argent Matriarch they could bring about a new era of peace. Maybe they would become Mates, and he would relax her however he could after she'd dealt with people and things that _vexed_ her, massage her, read to her, brush her hair and unwind with her, and she would make love to him, and she would tell him he was _good_ (no matter what his duty might've bid he do) and he would _believe_ her.

He _had_ **believed** her.

"I'm sorry," wavers, smothered by pitiful tears, emotion he is not worthy of (he's not worthy of _anything_ ) cascading through the words, through his body as it gives in, as his knees break and he collapses down, agonized, wounded, gutted sounds tumbling out of him, because he can't keep them in, he _can't_. His torso folds over his bended legs, body curling, fetal. "I'm _sorry,"_ he can't tell if he's apologizing or begging anymore.

He doesn't even understand _why_.

It's not like there's anyone here to _hear_ him.

"Derek?" Silver-sliver, voice as smoke-drenched lonely as this decrepit, _lost_ building.

"I'm sorry," he rasps again, because he can't _not_ , as footsteps, light and quick, race breathlessly toward him. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he sees her boots, her jeans as she kneels before him, her frantic, willowy hands, feather-light rainfall touches trickling, checking him over, searching, "I'm sorry," starlight eyes, swollen galaxies painted in pastel water-color, scrunched up in pained worry, "I'm sorry, Lulu, I'm _sorry._

"It's my fault, it's—I did this, _I **did** this."_

A sharp, wretched breath, and then her hands are clenched tightly in his collar, lifting him up as she shakes him, the lines of her face raw, pure, aching sadness undercut by boiling, acid-bubbling, _voracious_ **fury** , "Don't you _dare,"_ her tone cuts the wind to its' core, carves it out, makes everything else mutable, makes him focus on her and her anger _entirely_ , forces him to _pay attention_ (though still it trembles, still it contains brine, because she's weeping even as she says it), "don't you _dare_ **ever** say that to me again."

The _power_ thrumming through her, rumbling in the sub-vocal growl that claws its' way out of her throat, the cadence of it like sea-waves, rocking a ship, begging it to heave itself on the rocks, to submit to death with its' wreckage. A siren of naked rage. Blood pooling in her irises, enthralling, the thick-rich satin-red of it pouring over the thread of their Pack-bond, painting it a different color, a different _meaning_.

 **Alpha**.

_This is my Alpha._

It's dizzying. Overwhelming.

"Do you hear me, Derek?"

"Yeah," he croaks, sobs, body all shock-tingle shiver. He's cold. He's _so **cold**_. "Yeah, I hear you."

She makes a sound, rumbling and impotent and injured, _damaged_ , sweeps him up in her arms, into her body, the angles and ridges of it, and she's cold, too, but that's better. That's so much better. A relief.

He wants so badly to freeze.

(Part of him, far away, underwater, quietly, but insistently, wants just as badly to die.)

* * *

Derek's lying down in the backseat of the car she hotwired a few states back, sleeping somewhat soundly. He's been... _different_ , these past few weeks.

They both have.

But, maybe because he's younger, maybe because he's a Beta, maybe—

It's affecting him _intensely_. All she can think to do is try to hold him together.

Some days she doesn't know if it's working.

But he's _hers_ , and she... she will do her best.

They're parked on the side of some long-ass, dusty desert road, over-oxygenated and _hot_ , the scent of sand and clicking bugs, everything too-dry, sweat-slick, _thirsty_ , the sun shrieking exhaustively on the horizon, the burn of it so condensed you can literally _see_ it in the air, all irritating, uncomfortable pressure that increases incessantly, no break, no pause.

Despite the stale-still outside, she leaves the car, the small amount of refrigerated reprieve it provides, so as not to wake her little brother when she calls their Uncle.

She knows he's... lost, in a sense. (There isn't even a _whisper_ of a bond, no echo of his soul within her heart.) But _maybe_ , if the hunters don't get him, if he doesn't succumb to his injuries, if her choosing to leave him doesn't result in—

Maybe.

She has to go through doctors and nurses, first. She has to get them to put the phone up to her catatonic family member's ear without letting on that she's the Hale kid, the minor, the one who ran away; has to hope with every dull thud of her heart that they aren't going to bother with tracing this call, that they'll, if nothing else, have _pity_ , or too much selfish impatience to care, because she doesn't know what she'd do, at this point, if they tried to separate her from her brother again.

Finally, when all she can hear on the other line is whispery, discordant breath, overlaying a mechanical orchestra, she speaks. Softly. Most of it nonsense (she doesn't know how connected the hunters are, this could be being traced, recorded; they're going to have to ditch the car soon, they're going to have to hightail it somewhere else as quickly as possible, but it will be worth it. It _has_ to be worth it), wrapped up at the very end with a terrible, heart-aching, wavering-wet:

"I miss you. I love you. I'll call again, soon."

* * *

Today is the first day that their aimless driving hasn't felt like an _escape_. The first day it's been less clawing their way out of their own graves and more _moving_.

They're finally out of the desert, out of the heat, and he leaves his window rolled down, needing the _cold_. Everything's a wind-swept glaze, a hazy blur saturated in this wide-spread _pain_.

They're never in a familiar place for more than a second, never keep a vehicle for more than a week, sometimes day. He sleeps in the backseat while Laura drives, keeps watch whenever she allows herself the time to do the same.

Their family, their Pack, is gone, and the world keeps turning.

It feels like a dream. Fake. Technicolor, acting, everything languourous-strange, and they're floating above it all, for a time.

She keeps calling Uncle Peter, when she thinks he's not paying attention.

She thinks he's breaking down, she's _worried_. And it doesn't help that he feels sick to touch her, to touch _anyone_ , that she can smell that on him (she doesn't ask, and he wonders if she knows, or if she assumes it's the grief; he's terrified of the day she finds out and hates him as much as he hates himself). It doesn't help that the only reason he's living right now, the only reason he's _decided_ to live, is for her.

It doesn't help that when he looks at her he can't bring himself to feel anything _good_ , and so he hides it all, becomes a blank canvas where once he would've been— _something_.

Substantial, maybe.

Losing yourself is an insurmountable thing, he's learning.

She smiles at him, sometimes; tender, like a mother, like a concerned friend, and he's starting to forget what her smiles _used_ to look like, when they were the vibrance of stars, faerie-lights twinkling in her vivid eyes, lips spread wide enough to see gums and teeth, all her happy _exposed_ , bird-like, soaring, _free_. He misses that. _Viciously_.

But, then, he misses so many things.

And it's his own fault he's lost them, isn't it? Missing, mourning, is a _luxury_ he hasn't even _earned_.

Doesn't _deserve_.

* * *

☽ crawling ☾

* * *

It's been half a year since the fire when they get to new york.

Laura's long since been eighteen. Their small Pack is an almost radioactive thing, no Pack has been willing to take in another Alpha and her brother, let alone when they're on the lam from hunters. Some have helped, with supplies and money, but mostly they've only done so in order to send the siblings on their merry way.

But new york is different, too big, too loud, too many people, and, when they get there, succumbed to winter. There are many Packs in this city, and none hold the place overall, more anarchy and community than politics and treaties; besides, it's not as if you'd be able to tell one person from another in a place so... _aromatic_. And Derek. The only time he really seems comfortable nowadays is when he's _chilled_. He'd take off all his clothes and lay in the snow until ivory traded for _blue_ if she'd let him (and there is a precarious suicidal ideation in that, she knows, but she doesn't know what to do with it).

"This is the place," she decides after a singular moment saturated in the tremulous, thundering exhilaration of epiphany.

Derek looks over at her from the passenger's seat, watches her look out the windshield, steadily raises a single eyebrow. He's _always_ been a quiet kid, but it's been _different_ lately. There's no deadpanned joking, no reflection of sunlit amusement in the swamp water of his lily-pad eyes, no hint of _any_ emotion in his expression, when he allows himself to _express_ at all.

His scent, though, is stronger than she remembers it. Drenched in a powerful hatred, sadness, longing; and that hatred pools around him, turns inward, pin-needles scraping at his too-pale skin, a pungent, guilty, _vile_ , ceaseless thing.

It _kills_ her.

She grins at him, wobbly and a bit crooked, but nevertheless. A deep, slightly sniffling, steadying breath, "This is the place," she repeats. "I'm going to get a job-" his other brow raises- "get us an apartment, get you back in school," they knit together at that, less an objection than outright confusion, but that's the biggest reaction she's gotten out of him in a _while_ , so she's counting it as a win. "This is it. This is our **stop**."

There's a long moment of silence where he says, does, _reacts_ , **none**. She tongues her molars, incrementally inclining her head, raising her eyebrows questioningly, waiting, and he blinks owlishly at her. Suddenly, clumsily, as if finally realizing she actually _wants_ his opinion- and why _wouldn't_ she? Why does he expect her to _not?_ \- he nods, stilted and vaguely indifferent.

She exhales explosively, and reaches from the steering wheel to pat his knee, forgetting herself for a moment, forgetting that—

Her little brother flinches slightly, scent suddenly a swarm of bees, _buzzing_ , terrified, and she winces, quickly replacing her hand on the steering wheel, ignoring the sudden burn behind her eyes, the way her throat tightens, and the dull, ever-present ache in her heart spiking sharply. Her grip on the steering wheel increases until her knuckles go white.

"Sorry," he whispers, so, so small that it almost goes unheard.

She swallows convulsively, flexes her fingers, eyelids shutting tightly for the barest of moments to _breathe_ through it all.

A car-horn sounds, annoyed, behind them, and her eyes flutter open again as she puts pressure on the gas-pedal.

 _Keep moving,_ she tells herself, _you're alive so keep going. Have patience, have strength, if you can hold it together, hold **yourself** together, you can hold **him** together, too. You can do this._

 _You can **do** this_.

"It's alright," she whispers back, honest, unwavering. Then, because she has to, because it's become something of a mantra for her as of late, because she can't go an hour without reminding him or else her heart will _burst_ , and she'll fall to pieces, and she cannot _allow_ that: "I love you, little brother."

His scent, just _slightly_ , maybe by a _centimeter_ , eases, lifts, _warms_. Gods, the dichotomy is so fucking small, but she's absolutely _delighted_.

"I love you, too, big sister."

* * *

Thankfully, she'd managed to grab a duffel full of bearer bonds from their family's vault before they left Beacon Hills. It smooths the way, but, in all honesty, they still need to be frugal, and it'd probably be better to get a job than to get back into school _herself_.

Her education really isn't as important to her as Derek's.

But they can't do _anything_ (get a lease, enter a school, apply for any kind of occupation) without identification.

As much as she loves her name, who she is, as much as she once... had _difficulties_ with her father, for making her so question herself: there are _hunters_ on their tail, quite possibly child protective services, and if going by a different name is what keeps them **safe** , if _faking it 'till they make it_ keeps them **safe**? Well.

There's really no question as to what needs to be done, is there?

It takes about a month to get situated, forged birth certificates, passports, IDs—the whole nine from a helpful nest of Harpies in Syracuse, a high-rise in downtown New York City, ditching the car in favor of walking and subway passes, getting Derek signed up for school, getting some corporate cubicle job (her age and credentials all incredibly fake, but she manages well enough, despite it). She keeps them both unthinking, busy, and _taken care of_. It's... work. She's not going to sugar-coat that. Raising your little brother and grinding yourself to the bone, with the added weight of _constant grief_ on your shoulders is. Nearly impossible.

But she reconciles, and she pushes forward. She falls under the tide of fast-paced routine, cooks them breakfast, goes to work while Derek goes to school, comes home just as Derek is finishing up with his classwork, checks it over with him, cooks them dinner, tucks him in (however juvenile that may seem to others, they are wolves, and need that closeness to heal; besides, she sometimes gets the feeling that if she doesn't remind him she's _real_ , that she _needs_ him, he will let himself waste away, wither, run to Grandmother Death with his head bowed and a prayer for hell, like blood-soaked pennies, on his tongue), sometimes, if he can handle her touch, she will curl around him and let the peace of exhaustion take her, sometimes, if he cannot, she will leave him, and she'll _pray_ as she sleeps, that tomorrow will be any kind of **better**.

On wednesdays, she calls Peter with a burner phone that she destroys as soon as she's done.

She doesn't know why she doesn't talk to Derek about it, she _knows_ he knows. He never brings it up, either.

Actually, there's a whole _category_ of things that they leave purposefully unspoken these days. Neither of them uses the little pieces of gaelic they'd picked up from their father, flower petals of language he so often used to litter their home with, things they'd loved _thoughtlessly_ , that they keep, now, _carefully_. (Philip had taken to their father's language best, had a brogue-ish lilt, a melodious quirk that he'd inherited, that never once faded from his sun-drenched voice, a voice that she has to _struggle_ to _remember_ from time to time. She wonders, achingly, if she'll ever make peace with that.) Neither of them interacts socially with anyone other than _each other_ , despite the fact that, she knows, having three Betas would settle her wolf exponentially. It isn't worth the risk, isn't worth trying to introduce someone else into their already troubled dynamic, isn't _worth_. Besides, they're, technically, living on the run, from hunters, possibly the system, it's not as if they've been abiding by the _law_ since the fire.

Neither of them talk about how their wardrobe has suddenly become achromatic, how their lives have become whirlwind-breathless, just trying to get through the day, the rubbed-raw bleach-salted _agony_. They don't talk about Derek's touch-aversion, his functional mutism, his low-key suicidal tendencies, his overwhelming _guilt_. They don't talk about her girlfriend, who she has not contacted, who she never said goodbye to. They don't talk about the leather jacket she wears, so casually emulating their late father, whose love for her had fluctuated so vividly in the face of her sexuality.

They don't talk about their family, about the fire, hunters, _Peter_.

They _don't **talk**_.

But, sometimes, Derek will hug _her_ instead of the other way around, and she will be so _utterly **proud**_ of him that it brings tears of _joy_ to her eyes. Sometimes, he'll sit next to her on the couch, hand her a book, with a silent question, _hope_ , in the svelte stretch of his fingers, in the reaching line of his arm, and, no matter _how_ tired the day has made her, no matter how lethargy tangles with her knotted muscles and hollow bones, she will read to him. Sometimes, he _speaks_ , and she can find _delight_ in it, can revel in the often buried sound.

He said something yesterday, all dry-wit, cactus-flowers budding on the tip of his tongue, and she was so ecstatic she nearly fucking _fainted_.

There are moments, Laura finds, amidst the chaos and the tortured mourning, where seeds of love and happiness and _hope_ can be discovered. And, slowly, hands _damaged_ , broken, sun-burnt, _necrotic_ , she cultivates a garden in the graveyard of her soul.

When she can, when he _lets_ her, she takes a delicate clipping, and she clones the fruits of her capacity to _cope_ , gives the finished product, half melancholy, half devoted, to her little brother. Prays those plants take root.

* * *

Laura's lips are stained a blackberry color with a slight gold tint, and she's still wearing all black—Derek has a feeling she'll never _stop_ dressing up like she's going to a funeral, has a feeling _neither of them_ will. She smells, laughs, _exists_ in such a different way than she used to. She is all kind softness and brutal honest push, nurturing authority. She is hope and light, her tone _love_. She's _motherly_ in a way that almost _scares_ him. Which is to say: he clings, cleaves, with everything he has, with everything that he is, with everything that he is _able_ to when someone else's skin against his _hurts_ the way it does, because, Gods, what if he loses this, too?

What if he makes the mistake that gets her killed?

What if he lets loose the words, the truths, that make her _hate_ him?

And, oh, this _terrifies_ him, more than it ever used to, because she's taught him how to _want_ to **live** again.

He doesn't want to lose her.

He _can't_ lose her.

(He's already lost _parts_ of her, lost who she _was_ to the fire, but he's accepted that, he _has_. So, if nothing else, even though he knows he's not worthy, even though he knows this is so _entirely_ **selfish** a thing: may the Gods let him _keep **her**_.

Please.

 _Please_.)

"Der," she smiles from the doorway, overly friendly, full-up of concern, "what're you doin'?"

He blinks at her, swallows. His throat hurts, is rough, scratchy, he doesn't use it often enough. He should talk more, he knows he should, he knows he's worrying her. He's _always_ worrying her. And she has _so much_ to worry about, already.

"Listening," he answers, and for all his grim determination, he can only manage that one word, splits his cracked lips nearly bloody with it, the flow of spit to his mouth nonexistent, his teeth all locking guardians, keepers, foul knight errants, enveloping the space that his words might take with their pitch-black cloaks and dragging every gut-wrenching hard-fought sound back inside to _sleep_. But, heart thundering in his chest, guilt digging into his lungs, its' fingers slowly curling down and in, to clench in white-knuckled fists at the bottom of the organs, pull, scream, crowd, because wanting _anything_ after what he's _done_ —

But this isn't for him. This is for _Laura_. He _hates_ the feeling of... _contact_ , but for her. For _her_.

Trepidation tingling, shock-like, in his muscles, he climbs off the bed, rabbit-quick, and pulls her further into his room, onto his mattress, sticks his one of his headphones into her ear, collapses beside her, and, restlessly, _excruciatingly_ holds her hand.

Bites his tongue to keep the howl in, the _terror_.

It burns, it burns, it _burnsitburnsitburnsit_ —

Her fingers squeeze, kind, tender.

"It's okay," she breathes, and it's only then that he realizes his eyes are squeezed shut tightly, tears streaming down his shame-hot cheeks, scorching body trembling. Lana Del Rey plays quietly in his right ear, Laura's left, headphones connected to the ipod between them. "It's okay," her words wobble, waver, get drenched with rain and something indecipherable. His heart clenches, and he holds onto her hand like the lifeline it _is_.

"It's okay, baby brother. Gods, I promise you, it's okay. It's okay."

Her words stream on endlessly, soothing, and he weeps, his body weak, shiver-shake with it, desperation and unfulfilled emotion and _too much_.

He aches, he's so _raw_ , an infected wound, abscessed, being scraped open over and over again with a rusted spoon, salt ground in with crude, merciless fingertips, lemons squeezed cruelly, so the stinging juice mingles, drips, collects putridly inside.

"It's okay," she says, and it feels like disinfectant, her hand in his feels, for the _first_ time, _clean_.

(Tomorrow, touching her will be easier. The day after, better.

Months from now, the thrum of fire, of _dirty_ , of desperate _'no'_ , will be dull enough to almost ignore.

Months from now, Laura will tease him for his taste in music, and, albeit with fewer words than he once might've used, might've _had_ , he'll snark _back_.)

* * *

☽ walking ☾

* * *

"Hey Uncle Peter," she murmurs the moment the nurse leaves the phone with him. This has become nearly normal, by now, calling him/ Clinical. The nurses all know the procedure, at this point, and she has a more accurate estimation of the time constraints.

"So," she grins, tone light, "Derek's _finally_ turned eighteen. He tried to tell me not to do anything for his birthday, but, I, as his big sister and guardian, am still making him cake, and he can just _deal."_

She punctuates the word with the metallic sound of the oven slamming shut and chuckles softly, the tail-end of it a sigh.

"I wish it changed anything... but we still don't know _which_ group of hunters attacked us, let alone _why_ —beyond the _usual_. (And Der shies away from any mention of Beacon Hills, of _you_. I'm warming him up, though; he might actually be a part of these calls someday-" she's earnest, optimistic, really, she is- "just... just not _today_.)

"They haven't bothered you at _all_ , though, these past three years. I mean, my contacts in BH nowadays, after everything, aren't _great_ , especially since I have no idea who _is_ and _isn't_ safe, but. Everything I've been able to glean says you're being left entirely alone. Maybe that means you'll be okay-" ignoring the dull-throbbing anguish of loss, the gaping hole within her that was once dozens of Pack-bonds, ignoring the deadened, ghostly place where _his_ Pack-bond once lay, ignoring what duty, tradition, still begs she, as the Alpha, do (it gets easier to ignore all these things, after the first time, easier to tell herself it's alright, and this is _far_ from the _first time_ )- "maybe they think you aren't worth their trouble?

"Maybe they think we abandoned you—which we _haven't_ , those utter assholes... but maybe leaving you as you are now would be safer, huh? If they think we have nothing to do with you, maybe... maybe they'll just keep leaving you be?

"Gods, I wish... I wish you could tell me if I was making the right decision. I wish you could give me fucking _advice_ like you used to. I mean, these days, it's a little easier, I've figured this whole Alpha thing, _parenting_ thing—" she huffs runs a hand through her loose-tumble curls. "I've figured _myself_ out, and I can be... _confident_ in my, uh," a crooked smile fits itself onto her face, bittersweet, stained-glass rain, " _decision-making skills._

"But still, I.

"... I _miss you."_ Her timer dings, and she shakes her head at herself, already picking up the pitter-pat of approaching footsteps on the other end of the line. "I love you. I'll call again, soon."

"Lulu?" The nurse chirps as she steals the phone from her Uncle's ear. "Time's up."

Yep. She's got it down to an almost _exact_ science.

* * *

Her baby brother's got _issues_.

She's known this, hell, she _gets_ it, the past three years, the _fire_ , the **trauma**. She's got issues, too. But his are... sometimes _alarming_.

His silence and haphephobia have incrementally been traded for a kind of unparalleled _rage_. He is unsettled within the world, within himself, covered in sanguine ashes, dripping in his sweat-slick breath-heaved _fury_. Everything gets processed with a red-haze shallowness, and he lashes out, goes reckless-brash and doesn't stop to think anything _through_ (which she privately thinks is a huge fucking waste, considering he's actually a pretty clever kid, when he puts in the effort).

It's grief, survivor's guilt, maybe even something else entirely that she doesn't understand, and it's _tearing him apart_ , it's _been_ tearing him apart.

The moment he discovered he not only _had_ to live, but might actually _want_ to, he was infuriated, and now he's just **angry**. _All the time_.

It's serendipity, to find out a colleague at her workplace manages their _own_ anger-issues via working out and underground mma cage-fighting. And maybe that's not the _healthiest_ way to figure this shit out, but she's already having trouble enough trying to convince this kid to go to _college_ , getting him to agree to _therapy?_

So, she brings it up over dinner one night.

He, typically, looks at her like she's grown another head and promptly decides to ignore what he probably considers an outlandish suggestion.

"No, no, I'm _serious."_

"Really?" Derek drawls, unbearably dry, and stabs his fork into his steak like it's the still-beating heart of his most fearsome enemy.

"Baby brother, you're pissed off at your _food_ , do you realize that? This is a problem, and it's affecting your everyday life. Maybe getting it out'll make you feel better?"

"What? By hitting the gym and beating people up?" He sounds entirely unimpressed by the mere _idea_ , and she throws her hands in the air, exasperated.

_"Yes!"_

He sits back in his seat with a forceful thud, glaring at her searchingly (he never just _looks_ at anything anymore. The glare is perpetual. Like the old wives' tale, if you make that face for too long, it'll stick that way. Her little brother's _stuck that way_.), "Are you **serious** about this?"

"I think it'll _help_ you," she explains, stresses, beseeching. "Of _course_ I'm serious."

A long, tense breath, saturated in indecision and anxious hope, before, snapping and teeth clicking and begrudging all at once: _"Fine_ , I'll _try_ it."

"That's all I ask, pup, thank you." He rolls his eyes, hums a little. "I love you," she says, vaguely simpering.

"I love you, too," he mumbles, rushed, like he needs to get it out all at once or it'll crack him open, transform him into a geyser of emotions he can't handle being near, wants nothing more than to ignore, cover, let simmer, boil, _rot_.

Gods, how she worries for him.

* * *

New entry in the big sister werewolf bible :: _He's a shit fighter, and half the time I can't tell if he's trying to unleash his wrath, or if he just wants all that agony he carries inside to become tapestries on his skin, if he just wants someone to **hurt** him, **punish** him, but goddamn if he doesn't seem happier and calmer and more serene after a fight._

_Fuck it, if it works it works and all._

* * *

When Laura buys the camaro, she says, "It's an extravagance we don't need. But... _Gods."_ She bursts into giggles then, bright and overjoyed and raucous, born from somewhere _deep_ within, textured like cotton-candy and feather-light weightlessness, the silvery tinkle of wind-chimes, doves' wings all sinew-flex against summer's bleached-out cloudless sky. The sound is so _vivid_ to him because it's been so long since he's heard anything _like_ it, and, he realizes, this is Laura _happy_.

She is _capable_ of _being_ **happy**.

It's startling and overwhelming and it glitters like jewelry in the soot-stained underwater cave of his soul, a _light_ , however small, against the backdrop of void-shadow.

_Dazzling._

She looks at him, her eyes shattered beer-bottle glass, alcohol and aggressive toxicity scoured away by grains of beachsand and sea-salt brine. Still jagged, sharp, _cut_ , but _pure_ , immaculate, _**clean**_.

He's _floored_ by it.

"It's a damn good car," she breathes, and there's _pride_ , shimmery, sunlight reflected on the surface of a swimming pool, because she did _earn_ this; she managed their money, invested well, worked _hard_ , and, even without being able to claim their inheritance (money he doubts they would spend at all, if they had it), or their trust-funds, or the rest of what's in the vault, they're _comfortable_ , and they're _secure_ , financially speaking.

Maybe even _safe_ , **situationally** speaking.

He takes a breath, deep, just the barest hints of wavering, and for the first time in three years, the air doesn't taste like the ashes of his dead family. Part of him feels guilty for that, another part, deeper, and much, _much_ smaller, **relieved** ; all of him _wrestles_ with it, frustrated, impotent, _unspoken_ , and, in the end, futilely, the only conclusion he can draw is _anger_.

"Yeah," he agrees, sagging under the weight, shifting from foot to foot, suddenly so exhaustively _restless_.

Her eyes flicker a little, not dimming, exactly, but _close_ , before she's grabbing his arm and dragging him toward the vehicle.

"I—wha—?"

"We're going shopping."

_"What?"_

She grins at him over her shoulder, crooked-rogue, "Yes, little brother, you heard me: _shopping_. And you are going to find something you like, and I am going to buy it for you. A late birthday present, if you will."

"I don't _want_ anything," he growls, dirt-crumble grind building up petulantly in the back of his throat, a whining cadence buried just beneath, and she rolls her eyes at him, tossing him in the passengers' seat before leaning over the car door, sliding her sunglasses from the crown of her hair to her eyes, shading them, obscuring them from sight.

"I don't care," she informs him stubbornly, "you're _getting_ something."

She slams the door shut, then, rounds the car with a victorious saunter, and they spend the rest of the day driving around: them listening to shitty radio-stations, her blaring the music and shouting along with it at the very top of her lungs, him sticking his fingers in his ears and scowling at her as sarcastically as he possibly can, her frog-marching him into malls, thrift-stores, book-stores, _vintage hipster stores_ , him denying everything, unwilling, until it's been a whole afternoon, night, and early morning.

There are empty water-bottles and soda-bottles and crumpled twizzler packages all over-stuffed in the cup-holders, Laura's sunglasses having gone from useful, to a headband, to discarded so she could run her fingers through her now-messy, wind-blown, ink-silk curls, frustration written in every line of her.

"Please," she finally sighs, gone from teasingly delighted, to a kind of ill-conceived melancholy, and he doesn't _like_ her feeling this way, doesn't like that it's his _fault_ , that his clumsy ineptitude lost her all that cartwheels and barefoot dancing in the candy-apple green wild-grasses _happy_. "I know it's hard for you to _want_ something- _anything_ \- for yourself, and I'm not even going to play at pretending I understand _why_ , but——please, Der. Please, just _try?"_

He chews on the inside of his cheek, watching how the distant glaze of burgeoning sunlight casts ripples through the windshield, dusts her in some sort of ethereal ambiance, pale eyes, peach-fuzz, fey, milk-cream skin, smoke-shadow makeup, charcoal crushed-velvet crop-top, gypsy, cotton, dusk-pitched sea-wave skirt, and a leather jacket over it all, like the kind their dad used to wear. It looks cumbersome on her, bulky, like the weight of careless words, homophobic, sneering-snide, cajoling.

He loved their father.

But their father _hurt_ her so consistently before—

And he's always wondered if the reason why she wears that, the closest thing in resemblance to their dad's leather, his kutte, is because she feels—

Does she feel even a _fraction_ of what he does? She _shouldn't_. Why? _Why_ would she—

He reaches over, presses his fingers to the shining oil-slick of it, smooth material, smells like her, like dusty faerie-lights and mountains pitted against the horizon and home and _hope_. "This," he decides, and her eyes jump from her hands- tightened, bony, willow, around the steering wheel- to him, shock-wide. He pinches at the leather and tugs lightly, "I want this."

She gapes, face completely slack with surprise, before her eyes suddenly start to well, and she grabs at him, rough, hauls him in for an awkward limb-jabbing hug, not seeming to care how the gear-shift must be digging into her stomach, how the seat-belts must be rug-burn restraining her, too wrapped up in her urgency to envelop him in her sun-warm arms, digging her nose into the side of his neck and making a deep-rumble Alpha-wolf noise of such immense, immediate approval that he _melts_ , tensions he'd lived with for so long he'd forgotten how to _notice_ them _easing_.

The moment feels like an epiphany, transcendent, _hallow_.

"Okay," she croaks, laughter gurgling around her purr, "okay, just—" she pushes him back to unbuckle his seatbelt for him, offering occasional glancing, unbridled, fervent, gum-toothed smiles, like raw honey-comb, tranquil bumblebees buzzing a song in his veins as she unbuckles herself and clambers quickly out of the car, him following shortly after. She stumbles in her movements, all breathless haste, like she's half suspicious that if she doesn't make it happen _right away_ he'll change his mind and they'll be right back where they started—but she eventually gets the thing off, tangled second-skin, and, shining, _renewed_ , brighter than any star, she hands it over in a messy bundle, tears of exhilaration and surging, tumultuous emotions clinging to her eyelashes like morning dew.

Gently, he eases it away from her, flaps it out, straight, fluttering, crows' wings, before sliding it on, over his shoulders, a weight and an anchor all at once, familiar and unfamiliar. _New_ , but... not uncomfortable.

(And maybe, with this, he can help wash her clean of her perceived sins, if he can do _nothing else_ —he can do _this_.)

"Oh, deartháir beag," she breathes, so much like benediction, stippled with awe, "you look _beautiful."_

And for the first time in three devastating years, even with _the echo of her voice in my ears, gurgle-drown, saying almost the **exact same thing**_ — even with _blood, fire on my hands, burning, guilt, pleading, exhumed when I should've stayed buried, rotting, **dying**_ — even with _their bones are mine, charcoal dust, her fingers imprinted, why, why_ — even with _frustration, impotent penance, knuckles bruised, bleeding, opponent **down** on the other side of the ring, breath heaving, agonized fury_ — even with—

He _feels_ it.

Beautiful. Small.

And for the first time in three devastating years, tremulously, trembling, newly-born baby chick, shivering, drenched in—

Derek _smiles_.

**Author's Note:**

> **[[Again, keeping in mind that I do not know these languages, and am very open to being corrected, below is the ~~probably poorly translated~~ key. I love you guys!**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Irish :: Deartháir Beag = little/baby brother]]


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